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The surprising US-Israeli plan for Iranian “regime change,” Hot air only at Russia-China summit, Baltic states on edge before NATO meeting

​Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad showing his identity document with the other hand on his heart

Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shows his identity document to the media during registering his candidacy for Iran's upcoming presidential election in Tehran, on June 2, 2024.

Rouzbeh Fouladi/ZUMA Press Wire
By Zac Weisz,
Zac Weisz

Zac reports on global affairs, covering everything from elections and international relations, to conflicts in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. With the Trump administration keen to alter the world order, though, there’s a heavy emphasis right now on US politics – an area with which he is intimately familiar. He also reports on the cross-section between sports and geopolitics. Prior to joining GZERO, Zac was a senior national politics correspondent at National Journal, where he covered the 2024 presidential election from its inception to the dramatic finish, as well as major congressional actions during the Biden administration. Prior to journalism, Zac worked as an economic analyst for Oxford Economics, calculating the impact of various tax policies, as well as the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. Born in London, he currently resides in New York City, where you can find him playing football (the original version) or watching it on television while attempting to cook up a storm.

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Will Fitzpatrick,
Will Fitzpatrick

Will Fitzpatrick is a multimedia reporter and producer at GZERO, where he does a little bit of everything: writing for the GZERO Daily, creating social videos, producing GZERO World, and whatever else the news cycle throws his way.

Before GZERO, Will worked in documentary film on both the production and post-production sides, including on Everest: The Other Side and on The First Wave. He has also directed and produced two short documentaries of his own. Outside the film world, Will has worked as a freelance journalist, with reporting that has taken him from the dhow workshops of Oman to the mountains of Patagonia, with plenty of stops in between. He’s especially interested in the niche, hard-to-reach, and underreported stories that reveal something bigger about how the world works.

Will studied economics and world politics at Hamilton College and received his Master’s in journalism from New York University. When he's not reporting, you can likely find Will tending to his oyster farm, on a bike, or somewhere outdoors.

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Alex Kliment
Alex Kliment
Alex wears a few different caps and tips them all regularly. He writes for the GZERO Daily, works as a field correspondent for GZERO's nationally syndicated TV show GZERO WORLD WITH IAN BREMMER, and writes/directs/voices GZERO's award-winning puppet satire show PUPPET REGIME. Prior to joining GZERO, Alex worked as an analyst covering Russia and broader Emerging Markets for Eurasia Group. He has also written for the Financial Times from Washington, DC, and Sao Paulo Brazil. In his spare time, he makes short films and composes scores for long ones. He studied history and Slavic literature at Columbia and has a Master's from Johns Hopkins SAIS. He's a native New Yorker, a long-suffering Mets fan, and owns too many bicycles.
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May 20, 2026
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The US and Israel planned to install a Holocaust denier as Iran’s president

You heard that right: before the Iran war began, the United States and Israel planned to make former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – a Holocaust denier who has called for the destruction of Israel – the new leader, according to a New York Times report. Evidently, Ahmadinejad, who was under house arrest because of ideological clashes with the supreme leader and vigorous populist critiques of corruption within the regime, was seen as a possible pragmatist, akin to Delcy Rodriguez in Venezuela. The plan quickly went awry, though, as an Israeli strike meant to free Ahmadinejad on the first day of the war ended up injuring him, causing him to become “disillusioned with the audacious scheme,” according to the Times. If the reporting is true, it would appear that the US and Israel’s initial plans for “regime change” – US President Donald Trump urged Iranians to “take over your government” – weren’t as ambitious as they appeared in public.

Meanwhile, the status of the US-Israel-Iran ceasefire remains uncertain. On Wednesday, Iran threatened counterstrikes “beyond the region” should the US resume bombing. Vice President JD Vance, though, said Tuesday that there had been “good progress” in talks.

Putin-Xi summit wraps with… not much

Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Beijing this week for talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, but the high-profile encounter – Putin’s 25th trip to China as president – yielded little. The two sides failed to reach agreement on a key agenda item: a massive but long-delayed Russia-China gas pipeline. It appears Beijing, by far the dominant economic partner in the relationship, is still holding out for better pricing. Putin’s visit came just four days after a highly touted Trump-Xi summit that produced similarly little in terms of concrete outcomes. In combination, though, the two summits did achieve something: they showed that Beijing is now a key stop for any great power diplomacy. But with no discernible movement on two key global issues – the war in Ukraine, where China has supported Russia, and the US-Israel war on Iran, where China is a partner of Tehran – to what end does Xi plan to use that clout?


Baltic states on edge

Early Wednesday morning, residents and government personnel in Vilnius, Lithuania, were alerted to take shelter after a suspicious drone was spotted near the Belarusian border – the first such shelter alert within the EU and NATO since the invasion of Ukraine. This came just a day after Moscow issued a warning to neighboring Latvia, citing unfounded claims that Ukraine intended to launch drones from Latvian territory, and just a day after a stray Ukrainian drone was shot down in Estonian airspace. Despite the Baltic states’ calls for additional support from the alliance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is traveling to NATO’s foreign ministers meeting this week and is expected to call for members to boost their own defenses.

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